Round Two With R.R. Reno

First Things editor Rusty Reno continues our exchange over Cardinal O’Brien’s resignation. He thinks I’m far too given over to melodrama in talking about the “collapse” of Catholicism, and Christianity in general. Excerpt:

There’s an odd atmosphere of collapse, a kind of apocalyptic anxiety. Rod speaks of declining (collapsing!) Church attendance in Britain, which he merges with evocations and warnings about still more depravities to be uncovered. In his mind it adds up to a crisis of Catholicism akin to the traumas of the Reformation. He can’t understand why I’m not outraged, or mad, or in some way properly agitated by what he sees as the evident signs of a world-historical threat to the Christian witness.

Maybe I’m blind. Maybe I’m morally obtuse. Maybe I’m spiritually deluded. But then again maybe Christian faith and the Church have enough spiritual range, as it were, to cover bad situations like the current clerical abuse crisis, or larger trends such as secularism.

Well, a correction: I can’t understand why the editor of First Things is not outraged, mad, or properly agitated by the spectacle of yet another senior figure in the Church going down amid sexual misconduct allegations. I understand that there is a such thing as outrage fatigue, but really, a cardinal resigning over accusations that he sexually harassed or compromised priests and seminarians is a big deal.

And to refresh Rusty’s memory, I pointed out that Catholicism — and Christianity itself — has collapsed in Britain. How is this even debatable? Look at the numbers and the trends. The story is similar all across Europe. If this isn’t collapse, then what would collapse look like?

It’s not just a collapse of attendance, but a severe decline in authority to shape the larger culture. Damian Thompson, the conservative Catholic blogger and columnist at the Telegraph, calls the O’Brien takedown a “hit job,” but lays out the broader consequences of O’Brien’s fall in this blog post, and this follow-up. Excerpt:

If the charges against O’Brien have any substance to them, then the public credibility of the Scottish Catholic Church will collapse. And the rejoicing of the enemies of conservative Catholicism, who are especially vocal in Scotland, will be deafening. …

This country is in the middle of a debate about gay marriage in which, given the support of politicians and the media for the innovation, there is a shortage of public figures prepared to speak for the 50 per cent of voters unhappy with the measure. Until now, the Catholic Church has been given a respectful hearing. But today, with its senior clergyman accused of touching up young men after drink-fuelled “counselling”? We do not, it should be stressed, know that the behaviour actually occurred. What we do know is that, thanks to this grubby scandal, gay marriage seems even more of an inevitability – and the Catholic Church’s freedom to oppose it is suddenly looking more fragile.

We have even seen the practice of the Catholic faith in Ireland — Ireland! — severely eroded by the terrible sex scandals in the Church there.

This matters. This matters a lot. I would submit that the loss of Europe and the UK to Christianity is a calamity of the first magnitude.

We are in much better shape in the US, but that’s a relative judgment. As Putnam & Campbell reported in American Grace, Catholicism in the US is declining among Anglos as fast as mainline Protestantism is; if not for Hispanic immigration, the picture would look very different. Besides, the rise of the Nones — people, mostly under 35, who don’t claim any church — has been a huge religion story of late. There has never been a generation of Americans like this one, in terms of the falling-away from religious practice. Plus, Christian Smith’s great sociological work on Moralistic Therapeutic Deism has shown how American Christians across the church spectrum fail to understand even the most basic truths of Christianity. Absent some sort of revival, can we be far behind Europe and the UK?

I know that I’m partial to an apocalyptic sense, but I really don’t understand Rusty’s quietism in this moment. I don’t worry about Christianity, Catholic or otherwise, in the Global South. But I don’t live in the Global South. I live here. Jesus Christ said the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church, but he didn’t say the gates of Hell wouldn’t prevail against it in Europe and North America. More from Rusty’s blog:

But I can’t participate in his odd sense that somehow the Church is on the verge of collapse. No longer at the center of Western culture, no longer influential, no longer the obvious option for morally sensitive upper-middle-class people? Yes, quite possible, and in many ways already all too actual. But the collapse of the cultural dominance of Christianity is not at all the same thing as a spiritual, theological collapse. From where I sit, when it comes to the interior lives of Catholics and of the Church, things have gotten better, not worse, in the last two decades.

The world must look different from the offices of First Things. According to social science survey’s, Christianity is actually more of an option for morally sensitive upper middle class people than it is for the working class, among whom family structure is starting to fall apart. I agree that a religion’s cultural dominance is not the same thing as spiritual and theological health, but I would be curious to know exactly how one would judge that the interior lives of Catholics and of the Church has gotten better, not worse, in the last two decades. I mean, I hope it’s true, but how would one know that sort of thing?

A decade ago, a Catholic priest friend in New York sketched out a view of the future in the archdiocese, and said that ordinary Catholics had no real idea how bad things were going to get for them as a result of the vocations crisis. When I lived in Philadelphia, a Catholic layman friend — a man very active in archdiocesan affairs, and certainly well-informed — said sadly that the rapid decay of Catholic institutions there was so pronounced that he wondered what there would be for his children to inherit. Neither one of these men are apocalyptic types. They’re working on the front lines of the faith. And they are not cheered by what they see.

UPDATE: This in the comments thread, from a reader. I know about the cardinal of whom he speaks. This is true, and it is no secret to the Vatican, and wasn’t a secret to the Vatican before they gave this creep the red hat:

“From where I sit, when it comes to the interior lives of Catholics and of the Church, things have gotten better, not worse, in the last two decades”

A few years ago, I went to Ash Wednesday Mass in a major UC city celebrated by the recently retired Cardinal Archbishop. He preached a very good homily (unlike the mushy, unchallenging sermons favored by so many Catholic pastors I’ve experienced). Later, while reading legal documents from a lawsuit (I’m a lawyer), I discovered that this Cardinal Archbishop had repeatedly seduced young seminarians and even maintained several apartments where he took his victims. This is a man who rose as high as a cleric can rise; the elementary school my parents attended in his home diocese was renamed after him.

Does Reno understand how many Catholics perceive every priest, every bishop as a potential monster; how many of us simply can’t extend filial trust to the clergy because the strain of that trust being so often betrayed has been too heavy? Yes, the Church could easily survive Cardinal O’Brien being revealed to have habitually broken his vows to God. But what about so many bishops and priests being similarly compromised that it is no longer possible to assume that any given diocese is not harboring the same secrets?

I can only speak to my own interior life, but I can say that a dozen years ago, I didn’t feel like I was trying to follow Christ with no substantial help from the clergy; I didn’t feel like a lay sucker, trying to live the Catholic faith while our sacramental ministers broke the laws of God and man and cheerfully said Mass the next day. I didn’t feel spritually alone despite belonging to the largest church in the world.

The worst of all this is that after the gut-punch of revelation, comes always the minimizing and covering from whichever side of the politico-religious left/right divide the figure in question was admired by.

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42 Responses to Round Two With R.R. Reno

I wonder if part of what keeps poorer people out of churches and synagogues is money. When one of my cradle-Catholic friends had his first kid, he went to talk to a local priest. Instead of trying to welcome my friend back, the priest went on and on and on about how the diocese needed financial support. I’m sure that’s not unique to Catholicism. For example, many (most? nearly all?) synagogues require 4-figure donations to join. They say they will waive them if needed, but that forces people to beg for charity just to join.

I do not mean to single out Judaism and Catholicism. Churches and synagogues need money to pay clergy and keep the lights on. But that’s expensive, and it can be daunting for people without much money.

While Rusty Reno correctly observes that you tend to hit the panic button*. I have to admit that you’re on the money in your desire for accountability. As well as asking if this isn’t collapse what would collapse look like?

I lived in Scotland for a while, and my take (as an outsider) at the time was that it was the church’s stance on birth control that killed attendance, more than any other issue. People remembered what it was like to be a kid in a big, broke family.

Well, you know the one about the man who is unable to understand what he is paid to not understand.

I wouldn’t gloss having a college diploma with upper middle class. In the mean the population with a college diploma is middle middle class and probably biases toward lower middle class (e.g. teachers) rather than upper middle class (doctors).

I do wonder about Catholics who keep holding to the line that nothing is wrong, nothing at all! When I look at the increasing numbers of sexual scandals, cover-ups, and shady deals, it begins to look more like an organized crime syndicate than a religious organization. I can understand not wanting to take the organization on and facing retribution, but why keep it supporting it with your money and children?

“No longer at the center of Western culture, no longer influential, no longer the obvious option for morally sensitive upper-middle-class people? Yes, quite possible, and in many ways already all too actual.”

I just wince! It sounds like joining a country club, or an adman’s demographic statement: “morally sensitive upper-middle-class people”? Such language does not sound like someone talking about the faith, or even more, the Faith, which is what he presumably believes it to be.

Is it just me, or does it sound like the target demographic (if we add in “18 to 30 somethings”) of, say, PETA or some other SWPL charity?

I am going to say this again. I doubt the major institutional churches are near collapse. realignment as seek places of worship more to their liking (that speaks more to their fundamental needs, concerns and issues) or cease going attending at all.

But the excuses people have for dropping the faith of this or that are just that excuses. If I were attending a congregation that was engaged some tom follery, certainly, but using what happened a thousand miles away and in no relation to my particular faith and practice doesn’t register as some reliable complaint about Church viability.

Look when I was expected to jump on the war bandwagon, when clearly, the bandwagon was headed into hell, ok. But claiming that pastor so and so did such and such to so and so therefore, I am abandoning faith . . .

Now there is a concern beyond all the wailing about some small number of indiscretions. That is that large churches used to minister to people’s needs when people were in trouble as they are so commanded, if I grasp faith and practice. That bridge between faith and hunger is being severed. And I am not sure why that is happening. The reliance on government as opposed to leaning one’s place of faith and practice, may be having a much bigger impact, than scandals.

Even Pope John Paul II pointed out that the influence and pervasiveness of Christianity, in terms of following Christ, is not entirely coincident with the membership fortunes of the Roman Catholic church. He thought that overall, genuine Christian influence was greater than before, world wide.

You would think that since the seventies, when evangelicals and the “Moral Majority” spearheaded by politically conservative religious figures began to engage politically, that that influence on the culture wouldn’t have left us where we are culturally. But in retrospect, were the alliances just too compromising and in the end destructive to belief in the essence of what Christ teaches us?

The Christian mainstream completely lost me, a very disturbing event personally, over the last 12 years when just about everything Christ teaches was abandoned by those conservative Christians. I had already left liberal Christianity as irrelevant as I grew up in the sixties and seventies.

On the other hand, Jesus said that the number of His followers would never be a majority. Neither forced conversions or “automatic” birth Christianity of medieval times was of any effect as to whether a person really was a Christian, so it should be no surprise that a Christianity that is simply a national religion, official or not, is simply a utilitarian vehicle for population control in furtherance of elitist aims, without any change of loyalty towards Christ.

Christianity is not politics. In politics, winning the majority vote is what’s important, no matter what it takes. Hence throwing over Christian beliefs about marriage as soon as a poll shows shifting public opinion. True Christianity necessarily must speak truth to power, but it does not seek power over, as government and politicians do, but service from under.

The biggest obstacle to faith in the 21st century isn’t news about misbehaving clerics. It’s the lack of space in most people’s lives for prayer and quiet contemplation. Addiction to social media, texting, online updates, and virtual reality kills the sense of the sacred and leaves no room in the heart for God.

Hell Rod, I thought that Catholicism collapsed in England about the time Good King Henry lopped off the head of that vile traitor Thomas More.

Seriously, anyone who thinks that the Catholic Church had any influence on modern England has watched Brideshead Revisited too many times. From the late 15th through the mid 19th century Catholics were viewed as a social menace, a positive evil. In fact the patent for the first machine gun in the 1700s (try to imagine a flintlock gatling gun) had on it, “Defending King George, our country and laws, is defending ourselves and the Protestant cause.” It was designed to shoot Catholics, seriously and no one objected.

By the mid 19th century Catholics in England were no longer viewed as a threat to civil peace but merely as charming eccentrics, people to be tolerated but never to be taken too seriously. The idea of Catholics having a serious influence in England is simply wrong.

“The biggest obstacle to faith in the 21st century isn’t news about misbehaving clerics. It’s the lack of space in most people’s lives for prayer and quiet contemplation. Addiction to social media, texting, online updates, and virtual reality kills the sense of the sacred and leaves no room in the heart for God.”

I’m pretty sure that if the various causes for my own cynicism regarding the religious tradition I was raised in were listed in order of importance the clergy sex abuse scandal comes in way ahead of Facebook.

I wonder how much the apparent decline in Catholics in the developed world, combined with the Great Recession, and even more economic trouble in Italy and Europe, has affected the Catholic Church. When I read comments about how priests are aggressively discussing the need for financial support with parishioners, it makes me wonder. I don’t know anything about the economics of Churches. It would be interesting to know more about.

Catholicism is like an old 1964 911 Porsche. God, it’s beautiful and steeped in tradition and filled with intricate, perfect little ecosystems of mechanisms that made it the cutting edge of its day. But today it’s dangerous, leaks oil, runs on leaded, Porsche won’t make parts for it anymore, and you can’t find an honest mechanic who’s committed to making it street legal. So it sits in the garage and rusts while you drive the plastic camry to work.

I tend to be quite a dystopic myself, but the Catholic scene in Lake Charles gives me a lot of hope. We have a great bishop, who like Pope Benedict XVI, loves traditional Catholics, the Latin mass, and the pro-life movement. We have a lot of young, conservative Catholic priests, and there are numerous faithful Catholic families who have a lot of children. I am sure there are priests and laypeople here who may disappoint me at some point, but I know I, myself, have been a disappointment to others at times, in my Christian witness. Jesus said there would be wheat and tares in the Church, his best friends fell asleep and would not pray for him on the worst night of his life, and one of his own disciples betrayed him, so how can we expect any less on this earth?

Although an orthodox Evangelical, I’ve never felt like the “sky was falling” from a cultural perspective until relatively recently. I believe that our salvation does not come from within ourselves; rather, we must be conformed to the truth of our eternal, loving Creator. Therein lies the divide and I guess I have recently come to realize how stark a divide it truly is. Any appeal to joy or morality or justice or peace or order beyond our own existence seems rarely tolerated in our culture anymore. The common ground is vanishing!

But, as a Christian, I have great hope. While it is true that “[t]here is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death,” it is also true, as Rod points out, that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” the church. As Paul the Apostle outlines in 2 Corinthians 4,

“7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.”

I guess I’m taking my confidence in Christ more than our culture. And, therein, I have found great peace and joy.

Roman Catholicism’s flawed ecclesiology—its claim to be the divinely ordained, one and only representative of God on the earth—has led the church down this road where priests and bishops care more about protecting a particular institution’s image than protecting the young and vulnerable it has been charged with. Other denominations have sex scandals, but we’ve never seen the degree of cover-ups and protection of the guilty in churches that have a less exalted view of themselves.

The church is, indeed, on the decline, and there is much to regret in that. But, hopefully, this crisis will lead others to encounter a humbler, more Biblical faith.

“I wonder if part of what keeps poorer people out of churches and synagogues is money.”

That anecdote you shared is dismaying, but, honestly: I really don’t think that money is what is keeping most of these poor or working class families out of church. What are we to make of their grandparents and grandparents? My grandfather came back from the war with nothing but the service uniform on his back. He still went to Mass every week.

No, the problem goes a lot deeper. Lack of money is an excuse, if it’s even that. And it’s not the sex scandals, which are also often just an excuse. But that doesn’t make what Rod says really that far wrong. What the sex scandals do is to devastate the Church’s public witness. The unchurched who might have been open to its message may now be even harder to reach. We appear as hypocrites spectacularly unable to practice what we preach – especially when a senior clergyman who has managed to be louder than almost all in condemning same-sex marriage ends up being accused of touching up young men after drink-fuelled “counselling,” as Damian Thompson puts it.

There is no such thing as bad press. The timing of all this is very serendipitous. You’ve got a book coming out in a couple of weeks so you’ll be fine. Don’t sweat the small stuff… Just focus on your book, your family, and forget about your ex, the Roman Catholic Church. She’ll be just fine.

In connection with the comment from Charles Cosimano (Yesterday) regarding the Roman Catholic Church in the (modern) UK and the history history of ‘Protestantism’;

Yes, Henry VIII was correct in severing the political links of his part of the British Isles with Rome, but it was his daughter Elizabeth who created the basis of the current ‘reformed’ Anglican Catholic Church that has within it the dear old CofE (Church of England). She recognised that the truth of the teachings of the Church were important to keep, but the politics of the Romans were to be left in Rome. It was she that decreed that her people should be able to praise God and say Mass in their mother tongue – now all of a sudden the Bible was in a foreign language. The Priests that did not agree with these changes were given safe passage home (to Rome), the rest stayed and created a Church of the people.

Killing Catholics was never a policy of the Monarchs of England – Catholics were actually tolerated, as long as you did not wish to be King, a Member of Parliament or in another official position.

Why? because allegiance to the Pope or your Bishop can sometimes conflict with your allegiance to God or your fellow countryman. that is why, even today, when a Priest in the CofE is handed the keys to his church, it is the Queen that grants him, or her to look after the Flock of the Parish (the Curacy). The Church is the property of the Parish and entrusted to the Vicar. The Church therefore exists for the people, and the people flurish.

To say (in response to Rod) that Protestantism is dying in the UK, I would ask whether it ever thrived? After all the CofE is Catholic Communion with a Pope in Rome and in communion with the Holy fathers in the Orthodox Churches. In other words we (Anglicans) tolerate difference, something which out Roman brothers and sisters should start doing rather than ignoring what they can see (or know) in favour of maintaining the status-quo.

I’m not a particular fan of the doom-and-gloom outlook, but I don’t think that is what is going on here. Like Rod, I simply cannot comprehend this attitude by folks such as Reno who seem to be saying “Ah well. S**t happens, even to cardinals. Pass the cheese balls, willya?”

When fundamental trust in an institution is undermined, that institution is in its death throes; it may take a long time, and we may not even see a total collapse. But it will have been long since rendered impotent, an empty shell without authority, irrelevant.

It is not hysterical or “faux outrage” to wonder how long it will be before some of the essential bonds of trust between Catholics and the Church are irreparably broken.

When your organization is led by a leadership cadre that is unable to produce a viable next generation of leaders, it will ultimately suffer some kind of collapse. That’s what’s happening to the Church right now. What few priests they are producing most people aren’t willing to follow. So there is a structural decay that for now seems irreversible.

Tied to that is the inability of the present leadership to rid itself of a pernicious minority of evil clergy who are driven by their own depravity. Rather than reform themselves, the clergy has “chosen” now to be reformed by the American trial lawyers. What little reform they implement, it’s always driven by a desire to preserve the Church’s wealth. Look at the endless fingerprinting of lay people that is going on in the parishes while the hierarchy is still shielding pedophiles and swindlers from the top. This will not come to a good end. More scandals lie ahead……………….

Damian Thompson makes a very good point about the timing of the revelations against Cardinal O’Brian. It strikes me as a bit odd that the accusers waited until now, just before his retirement, just before a conclave, to drop this bomb. The accusers are nailing their boss (be he guilty or no) in the back, just as he is about to retire..

There are two there things that occur: One is that if the cardinal is innocent, then he is truly a victim of the scandals, because now the default is to credit all accusations as credible. I mean, how could he not be gulity? All priests are presumed pervs anyway, and the bishops are hypocrites by definition. Of course he’s guilty. It’s the new Catholic sacerdotal charism.

Second thought is that if he is in fact guilty, and is a closeted homosexual that tried to seduce priests under his authority, all while vocally opposing homosexual marriage in defense of traditional teaching.. Well, what does that imply about him, and his motives? I’m just cynical and suspicious enough to believe it possible that this could be a deliberate ploy on the part of hypocrites to discredit the Church.

It’s either they are very stupid, gapingly morally obtuse and weak (possible) or else that they are cynical and hypocritical wolves in shepherds’ clothing, deliberately behaving in ways designed to utterly discredit the Church. I’ve long suspected that this scandal may not be merely be bumbling idiocy committed in good faith by men who wanted to protect the Church, but rather a deliberate pattern of spiteful malicious malfeasance meant to undermine her.

I sense it may be the very worst, and that there is in fact a cabal within the Church seeking to destroy it. Incompetent bumbling does not seem to explain all this.

“From where I sit, when it comes to the interior lives of Catholics and of the Church, things have gotten better, not worse, in the last two decades”

A few years ago, I went to Ash Wednesday Mass in a major UC city celebrated by the recently retired Cardinal Archbishop. He preached a very good homily (unlike the mushy, unchallenging sermons favored by so many Catholic pastors I’ve experienced). Later, while reading legal documents from a lawsuit (I’m a lawyer), I discovered that this Cardinal Archbishop had repeatedly seduced young seminarians and even maintained several apartments where he took his victims. This is a man who rose as high as a cleric can rise; the elementary school my parents attended in his home diocese was renamed after him.

Does Reno understand how many Catholics perceive every priest, every bishop as a potential monster; how many of us simply can’t extend filial trust to the clergy because the strain of that trust being so often betrayed has been too heavy? Yes, the Church could easily survive Cardinal O’Brien being revealed to have habitually broken his vows to God. But what about so many bishops and priests being similarly compromised that it is no longer possible to assume that any given diocese is not harboring the same secrets?

I can only speak to my own interior life, but I can say that a dozen years ago, I didn’t feel like I was trying to follow Christ with no substantial help from the clergy; I didn’t feel like a lay sucker, trying to live the Catholic faith while our sacramental ministers broke the laws of God and man and cheerfully said Mass the next day. I didn’t feel spritually alone despite belonging to the largest church in the world.

The worst of all this is that after the gut-punch of revelation, comes always the minimizing and covering from whichever side of the politico-religious left/right divide the figure in question was admired by.

One should note that all forms of social organization are dying in Western countries, including the US. The social waning of the Church goes alongside the social waning of voluntary associations of every sort: political parties, singing groups, lodges, bowling leagues, sewing circles, town meetings, labor unions. Global capitalism has atomized Western society over the last 30 years. We’ll have a chance to put it back together over the next 30 as global capitalism blows itself up and we look more to one another than to the state or the market.

Glyn Tutt,
What an amazingly whitewashed version of history you’ve given of the CofE! So much so that it’s not history; it’s a public relations document.

Catholics were actively discriminated against by law until the 19th century in England. There was no freedom of religion; this lack of freedom extended downward to various Protestant sects lower than the CofE. Catholic priests send from France were put to death in spectacularly gruesome ways in the 16th century.

To be fair and accurate, Mary did her own nasty, brutal persecution of Anglicans as well in her brief reign.

The CofE is not clearly a catholic and apostolic church, unlike the Orthodox and RC churches. It had a period under Cromwell where sacramental priesthood, let alone bishoprics (the fulness of the priesthood) was actively under attack; and its latitudinarianism regarding sacramental things raises questions about individual orders; furthermore, depending on where one is in the CofE or Anglican communion, communion can be almost anything, from memorial meal to full on sacrament.

There’s a reason why high Anglican priests have in the past often looked for secondary ordinations by bishops with clearly apostolic lineages, as they were unsure of their own bishops’ lineages.

I think many aspects of Anglicanism are beatiful, lovely, divinely inspired: Donne’s sermons, the English bible, the Book of Common Prayer in its earlier iterations; the choral tradition that is heart-rendingly beautiful; but I also expect my history to be accurate.

I agree with most of your diagnosis, but along with Rusty, I’m puzzled by your agitation.

Firstly, the strength and influence of the Church in the world waxes and wanes. It always has. At one point, nearly every bishop had gone Arian — denying the very divinity of Jesus Christ! Yet we survived.

Secondly, people are deeply sinful. Radically sinful. Perhaps you have not fully accepted the depravity of man: I often find that Eastern Orthodox have an overly optimistic opinion of man’s nature, even in his fallen state. Since Judas betrayed the Lord, the Catholic Church has been full of men and women — many of whom held positions of leadership — who are corrupt and wicked. After all, we are a hospital for sinners.

Anyway, are any of us really better than O’Brien? Recall the words of St. James: “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (2:10). If you are not outraged at the sinfulness of your wife or your children, then perhaps you should reconsider your outrage at the sinfulness of the cardinal. What should we feel? Disappointment? Yes. Compassion? Yes. Mercy? Yes. The desire to admonish charitably and gently build back up? Yes, yes, yes. But outrage? Let us leave that to God, hard as it may be. For none of us can judge, for none of us are righteous.

While I think Stephen P’s observation about the Church’s ecclesiology being the problem is misleading (of course it is because it has organized itself as one universal church that it is the kind of organization in which such scandals will result in high-level coverups, because other churches don’t have structures that would make that possible), I agree that there is an institutional humbling of massive proportions happening here, much like the loss of the papal states, which has been one of the best blessings for the credibility of the Church in modern times. Yes, the cultural influence the Church had under JP2 has nearly vanished. Yes, I think Rod is right that this is a grave crisis culturally. But I would partly defend Rusty by saying that thanks in large part to the last two Popes, the good theology in the Church is both better than it has been in a long time and more clear-sighted about its situation as a sign of contradiction. Most Catholics don’t get this, and so there will continue to be gradual attrition of those who grew up in the Church without being significantly formed by it; it will seem irrelevant to them. Then there will be those who somehow think we’re supposed to be able to trust in “priests” or the juridical institutional authority of the Church, who will be disaffected by the scandals. Finally there will be those who get the theology and trust the magisterial teachings, or who recognize the deep opposition between Eucharistic love and the standards of the culture, or who have a good pastor they know they can trust or a parish alive with faith, and they will continue to be the Church, and their witness will be more urgently needed and less visible by the numbers.

Charles–there might be a third explanation: a group of people within the Church who were willing to remain quiet up to now but who upon hearing more hagiography of O’Brien being generated have finally had a belly-full of his sanctimonious hypocrisy and decided to blow the gaff.

What too many Catholic bloggers (not you, Rod) seem to be whining about is that the automatic deference that the Church used to have is now not in existence any more. Well, there’s a very good reason for it. If the Church had not had so many scandals and had not tried to cover up the bad actions of its prelates, then there wouldn’t have been the loss of trust.

Trust can never be mandated by authority. It can only be earned through good acts and demonstrated self-policing.

I wonder if it is unrealistic to expect that a culture as ancient and as embedded as the Church is going to turn on a dime – we think that all it was going to take to clean up the sex abuse scandals was to get rid of a few bad apples. But now it seems apparent that something fundamental about the culture of the Church has to be altered. I think that the acceptance of gay normalcy has created – maybe even more so than the sex abuse horror – this crisis. The Church provided a haven for gay men for centuries. I suspect most of those gay men in the priesthood where good priests. In many ways the crisis of the Church now demonstrates how destructive the “closet” is. As the closet now is abolished – centuries of a perverse culture in the Church is also being revealed. Distressing as these revelations are – perhaps it is a necessary purging of an older generation of clergy still stuck in this perverse culture.

If medieval commentators are accurate – there was a common perception of homosexuality among the clergy – especially monastics. Yet faith survived. So why are we so shocked now that both gay and heterosexual priests find celibacy hard to live with ? Perhaps we have less tolerance for hypocrisy – perhaps we are less forgiving or even understanding about what it means to be human and frail.

I think faith requires of us to be confident. The Church is more than a human institution. The times we live in are troubling but what we may be seeing now is a lurching and ugly cleansing and renewal of the Church. Will that get more people back to Christ? I doubt it – there are so many reasons why people are rejecting the life of the spirit – the world is for sure too much with us. But it may over time at least restore the Church as a credible witness.

“Anyway, are any of us really better than O’Brien? Recall the words of St. James: “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (2:10). If you are not outraged at the sinfulness of your wife or your children, then perhaps you should reconsider your outrage at the sinfulness of the cardinal. What should we feel? Disappointment? Yes. Compassion? Yes. Mercy? Yes. The desire to admonish charitably and gently build back up? Yes, yes, yes. But outrage? Let us leave that to God, hard as it may be. For none of us can judge, for none of us are righteous.”

This is the same tripe we heard after news that Maciel actually was a total fraud and deviant came out.

Meh, no big deal–we’re all sinners, who are we to judge. Move on, people! Nothing to see here, other than the depravity we all know exists in human nature. We are ALL Maciels.

It’s laughable and certainly doesn’t work any more.

Our eyes have been opened, and this is a common tactic used by those who would silence those rightfully outraged by disgusting behavior.

I freely admit I am a sinner. But I am not now nor ever have been a person who abuses others sexually in the name of God or the power given to me through a position in the Church.

Anybody who can’t see a difference between that is bound to be laughed out of the room.

(To be clear, I certainly don’t think O’Brien, even if guilty as charged, is nearly at the level of depravity and evil as a Maciel. But I sure as hell believe he is far more depraved than the little old lady living down the street who may engage in gossip or drink too much.)

This kind of lack of acknowledgement of differing degrees of sinfulness in an effort to silence anybody who would raise the alarm (because, after all, if we are all equally evil, what right do any of us have to be disgusted by anybody else’s evil?) just further discredits the Church.

And it’s SO ten years ago to those of us whose everyday lives have been forever changed by the knowledge the abuse scandals has given us that it literally makes me laugh out loud.

Re: the updated part of the post….I can only speak for myself, but what happens is this all becomes exhausting. When you begin to feel like the walking wounded, when everywhere you turn there is another monstrous story, when the monsters themselves are right in front of you, perhaps even saying Mass on the altar, asking you for money, money, money…When you start to doubt everything you thought you believed in…What is the right thing to do then?

Add in the complicating factors of your financial support to this long nightmare and the challenges of raising children in the faith…it can all just become too much.

Reno makes some good points about the Church’s range to handle such scandals, however, included in that range is a howling condemnation of the behaviors of the shepards of Christ. The real charge against Reno is his ridiculous argument that a bishop or priest working at a seminary is analagous a communications professor at State U who pressures a grad student to have sex. And that these kinds of apparently analagous situations are nothing to express righteous anger about.

When I think of Reno’s incessant mealy mouth talk about how he himself is “midly exasperated” over Dreher’s concerns, I can only think of Christ speaking in Revelation 3:16:

“So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

So why are we so shocked now that both gay and heterosexual priests find celibacy hard to live with ? Perhaps we have less tolerance for hypocrisy – perhaps we are less forgiving or even understanding about what it means to be human and frail.

Not really. In politics, a record of good ethics and well-meaningness of the incumbents is the last rationale for supporting them once all the reasons of interests in common have faded. That’s why the House Bank scandal was so devastating to House Democrats in 1994- the offenses were mostly minor, but they did undermine that last rationale. That election was decided by a significant portion of the Democratic base voters staying home. In the big picture the real problem was that Democratic incumbents were unwilling to advocate or pass legislation their partisan supporters wanted passed and the scandal was simply the last straw.

In the RCC the sex abuse scandal demolished the last general rationale on which a lot of parishioners had supported the Church hierarchy and its teachings- as admirable men committed to something great. Once that was eroded a lot of parishioners saw clearly that there were few or no interests or significant issues on which they are in agreement with the hierarchy. I’d say that the RCC is something of a zombie church in the U.S. at this point- life goes on on autopilot, each side pretending nothing has changed to each other, and masses and baptisms and marriages and funerals go on as scheduled and necessary. But much/most of the laity and much of the clergy seem to have no true institutional relationship of meaningful trust or support of each other- of mutual faith and shared beliefs and duty to work/suffer for each other- remaining.

Sigh. I always thought that John Paul didn’t believe what he was being told about the scandal because of his experience under Communism where any and every falsehood was used to undermine the Church. I had hoped that Benedict would clean house, but not much change is visible. There is, of course, the problem of separating the false charges from the credible. Surely there must be some way to remove the guilty from power?

Whatever one’s financial situation, it’s difficult to give money to a church when that church seems to be supporting sumptuous lifestyles for the depraved. I am worn out by all of this. I am worn out by bad liturgy, bad music and bad management. I’m thinking about becoming a Quaker.

“Does Reno understand how many Catholics perceive every priest, every bishop as a potential monster; how many of us simply can’t extend filial trust to the clergy because the strain of that trust being so often betrayed has been too heavy?”

In the past several years, I’ve had to go through some challenges. My 39 year old wife was killed, leaving me to raise 3 sons ages 13 to 3. I got substantial help from parish priests ove the next several years. A priest very close to the family said her funeral Mass. Another close priest administered First Communion to my yougest son. My two older sons were altar servers. WhenI got remarried a few years later, a priest close to our family presided. The principal of my son’s Catholic school presented my son with a National Merit Scholar awward.

All these happy and sad evetns were documented by family photographs, typical for any multigenerational Catholic family. My photos differ from those of my parents and gerandaparents becasue they are in unfaded living color.

There is another difference, too:

Every priest in every one of of my photes was a child molestor. The priests who said the funeral mass, the wedding, the first communion, the high school principal, the parish pastor, all chld molesters removed from ministry.

I now vomit when I look at family photos of religious events.

I do not think Reno can grasp what the clergy sex abuse crisis means to everyday Catholics.

It doesn’t really matter what Protestant, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus think about this. We may consider it irrelevant. We may smirk and confirm our opinions about Rome. We may sigh and say, oh, that’s so sad for our dear Catholic neighbors. But its not a crisis for our faith, for what we believe.

What really matters is what this does to the faith devout Roman Catholics have in their own church. After all, they found good cause to believe and obey. and now… well, “Anon for now” says it all.

Maybe it’s not the end of the Catholic Church. Maybe it’s not even the end of the Catholic Church in Europe and North America. But it sure is a pretty bad earthquake. Maybe the swirling rumors are overstating things. Maybe nearly everything has come to light already and the Church will deal with it slowly and steadily over the next few decades and a new equilibrium will be established. But the average person just can’t shake the suspicion that the whole edifice is so riddled with holes that it’s unsound. This is about integrity, both structural and moral. In this new information age, things can’t be kept in the dark indefinitely. A democratized mass media has its dangers, but it also has undeniable power. It’s already toppled a dozen regimes in the Middle East. The consequences of that have been a mixed bag so far.